TABLE OF CONTENTS CATEGORIES – Page 6 – Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World

KVIRCEDLI – an extra-leavened Springerle variation from Hungary’s wine country

Welcome to another long article, which obviously has nothing to do with a wordy author! Blame it on the combination of a stubborn cookie with a lot of noteworthy tricks and a fascinating tradition. Many thanks up front to Mirtill Seregély, a wonderful Hungarian baker we met online. She’s the one who published the original recipe, and was also our primary source for the cultural background that turned out to be essential. Essential how, you ask? Read on.

As always, skip to the bottom if you only want the recipe. That covers the “what.” The rest of this article goes into the underlying “why.”

What Are We Talking About Here?

Kvircedli are a rectangular molded cookie that holds good impressions but does not get painted. It has a texture like crunchy, chewy sponge cake, a nondescript but familiar flavor that will remind you of Ladyfingers, and an almost unique profile that displays the airy texture inside.

The recipe itself looks like a classic Springerle, with 25% less sugar, lemon as the only flavor, and a whopping eight (8) times as much leavening. That last is the elephant in the room. Normal Springerle use ¼ tsp. of Hartshorn (baker’s ammonia) for a 3-egg recipe. Kvircedli use a full 2 tsp. Two bloody teaspoons!

That enormous amount of leavening requires a lot of little tricks that are hard to figure out, but turn out to be directly tied into the cookie’s history, tradition, and purpose. So let’s turn to that front next.

Kvircedli History and Tradition

The former Hapsburg Empire left behind a legendary baking tradition that pervades every one of the varied corners to which it stretched. Austria in the west? Ever hear of Linzer Torte or Strudel? The Balkans to the south? They may hate each other politically, but the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Albanians, etc. have nothing but respect for their respective baking traditions. We do too. The Czechs and Moravians to the north? Awesome. The Czech tradition of Christmas sweets is what drove us into baking so much in the first place.

The Hungarians in the east use their ovens every bit as well as their former Imperial brothers. Kifle, the filled flaky cookies we called “Kolachy” in Volume I; the famous Esterhazy and Dobos Tortes; the Poppy Seed and Nut Rolls found in half the bakeries of America; it doesn’t end. You could probably list dozens of absolute classics that either originated in Hungary, or get made there with as much skill as anywhere else in the world. So when we saw the Hungarian folk recipe that Mirtill shared, which took dense Springerle in a whole new direction, we knew it had to be tried.

You’ll read below about some of the troubles we ran into. Those didn’t get solved until Scott went back to Mirtill for a lesson on the sort of deeper background that often gets ignored.

The Hungarian people go back to Attila the Hun and his wild tribesmen from the vast steppes of Asia, who invaded the Roman Empire more than 1500 years ago. After his death in 453 they settled in the land that now holds their name, with a hauntingly beautiful language related to nothing in Europe except Finnish and Estonian – three peoples who trace their history to common roots.

The following centuries naturally saw a certain amount of immigration from other areas, leading to several ethnic minorities. The German speaking minority are known as the Swabians. Somehow or other that group (apparently with the aid of some Capuchin monks) became big players in Hungary’s winemaking tradition, with a major center in the little town of Mór (population just under 15,000). Think of it as Hungary’s Napa Valley and you’ll get the idea. Other parts of the country specialize in rich reds or aromatic dessert wines, but Wikipedia says that Mór built its reputation on dry white wines similar to sauvignon blanc.

Kvircedli come from that region, and are best known as the treat that winemakers still serve whenever they open the doors for a tasting. Mirtill tells me the cookie also shows up at special events like baptisms and weddings, though I suspect you’d get into a flavored variation for those. More on that below.

Stop and think about that. This is a cookie designed and used in a small, immensely scenic part of the world for the express purpose of vineyard tours and celebrations. How awesome is that? But it gets even more quaint if you dig a little deeper!

Legend holds that local women created Kvircedli to get around a religious law that forbade them from drinking alcohol. Some ignorant, almost-certain-to-be-a-bachelor really thought he could expect the wives to sit there quietly while their husbands quaffed the local product? Even in the name of religion? Riiiight. The ladies responded by inventing this airy, absorbent cookie with a convenient rectangular shape that’s perfect for dipping into unwatched cups. And thus they “ate” their wine instead of “drinking.”

Problem #1: Is the Flavor Too Bland?

The history and the story both help to explain the flavor profile. Traditional Springerle have a distinct anise flavor that would not play well at a wine tasting. Okay, it might not ruin a well balanced red, but after that you’re looking at some potentially ugly clashes. A nice, neutral, vaguely lemon profile makes a much better palate cleanser, while the crunchy-outside, chewy-inside texture does the exact same thing for your other senses. It makes an ideal reset button to move from one wine on to the next.

Pretty smart! If you’re a winemaker looking for a fantastic and proven gimmick, I offer Kvircedli at your tastings as suggestion #1.

But what if you just want to enjoy the cookie in some other setting, like one of those baptisms or weddings? Well… I guess my first answer would be that celebrations often involve a lot of wine, and simple flavors tend to be child friendly too. That said, it takes almost nothing to jazz this dough up with whatever interesting flavor may strike your fancy. We did a batch with that Croatian flavor profile that worked so well for Dalmatinski Rafioli, and the result was all we could have hoped. A spice or spice mix would work every bit as well. We put a suggested proportion in the recipe if you’re interested.

Problem, if it is a problem, solved.

Problem #2: Stick to Simple Patterns

Springerle taste fine and all, but their glory lies in the amazing, painted patterns that make people say, “That looks way too pretty to eat.” We went into this hoping that Kvircedli would offer a similarly result with a very different texture. The strong similarities between the two doughs gave us a lot of hope in that regard. But it was not to be.

It took a while for us to realize it, but that rectangular shape is actually a major key to making this recipe work. Here is a picture of some traditional molds that Mirtill Seregély shared:

Traditional Kvircedli molds carved from alder wood by Zsuzsanna Sáriczné. Note how the impression comes from rolling the mold over the dough, side after side so the pictures end up touching. Read below and you’ll see why that matters! Photo Copyright 2021 by Mirtill Seregély, and used with permission.

A fuller array of traditional Kvircedli molds carved from alder wood by Pál Szarka. Photo Copyright 2021 by Mirtill Seregély, and used with permission.

That rectangular shape turned out to be important.

Kvircedli stray from the traditional Springerle recipe by using an enormous amount of leavening to change the internal structure of the cookie. That’s the core idea. When we used a traditional Springerle mold, particularly a round or oval one, the pretty surface patterns held up fine, but the cookies baked into uneven, lopsided shapes tilted as much 45º off the level. The dough puffed out randomly to one side or the other, and occasionally even heaved up unevenly in two directions.

Looking a little closer at the recipe, and at some online examples, showed us why. One of the key features in a traditional Springerle is the “foot”; a ring of dough that puffs out sideways as the cookie bakes. You see this in Macarons too. The cause is the same in both cases.

First you make the dough, and then you stamp it with a fancy shape (for Springerle) or pipe it into a neat circle (for Macarons). Then you let the dough rest on a counter long enough for the outside surface to dry out into a skin. That takes up to 2 hours for Macarons, and 24 hours for Springerle. The bottom, of course, does not dry out because it is resting on a parchment-lined tray.

When you bake the cookies, the bottom and core expand as heat turns the inside moisture to steam and/or activates the leavener to create CO2. Boyle’s law says those gases need to expand in all directions, but they can’t go up through the dried out skin. So instead you get extra vertical rise combined with a horizontal “foot” as dough puffs out around the bottom.

A pan of Kvircedli packs the unbaked cookies close enough together (about 3-4 mm = ⅛” apart) for the feet to expand into each other. The result? Each cookie supports its neighbors from the side as they bake, adding a little extra rise while also preventing a tilt in any one direction. Have a look at the tray we just baked for this article (stamped with the bottom of a crystal knife rest since we do not have one of Mirtill’s special molds to play with):

There are would-be cookie molds all over the house!

Soldiers lined up and waiting to bake. The dough is ⅜” thick after being impressed with the pattern, but not yet puffed.

That is the raw dough.

See how the ones on the edges have puffed unevenly?

Here is the same tray after baking. The middle ones are nice and even, and have puffed from ⅜” up to a full 1″ tall. The ones on the edge got lopsided because they received no support from a neighbor. FWIW, this process also results in a much desired side effect. Kvircedli are a breakaway cookie that gets divided along those pre-inscribed lines. Doing so reveals the uniquely beautiful, spongy interior.

Showing the lovely sponge cake texture. Just be careful not to crush your pattern as you pull. There is nothing wrong with using a paring knife to get things started if the cookies started out a little too close together on the tray.

Problem #3: The Evil, Cat Box Reek of Ammonia

But there was a joker in the deck! Hartshorn a/k/a Baker’s Ammonia a/k/a Ammonium Carbonate has yet a fourth name: Smelling Salts. And believe me, they work. If your beloved should ever swoon in a most dainty and Victorian manner, one good whiff of this stuff will quickly break the trance. Blech.

Hartshorn works by breaking down into ammonia and CO2 when heat is applied. The ammonia bakes off, while the CO2 provides the lift you wanted. Springerle recipes use a bare ¼ tsp. in the dough for this volume of eggs and flour. That amount is enough to leave a foul odor in your oven, but won’t be noticed in the final product over all the anise notes. With Kvircedli you’re going to wince when you open that oven, and sticking your nose against the fresh baked cookies is not going to make you happy. Indeed, our recipe contains an explicit warning to avert your face when you open the oven door in order to spin the baking trays, and again when you remove the finished cookies.

Some of that odor inevitably ends up embedded inside the freshly baked cookies.

We tried a few things to fix this. First, we cut the amount of Hartshorn in half and replaced that portion with baking powder at our normal ratio of 3 parts baking powder for every 2 parts of Hartshorn being replaced. That was the batch mentioned above, where we used proper Springerle molds in addition to the knife-rest stamp. The results were uneven. Literally, and sometimes at multiple angles inside the same piece. It was worst in the oval Springerle that baked in splendid isolation, but the phenomenon showed up in the square ones we baked side by side. So was it the leavener? The much more varied heights of the pattern? Or the fact that “side by side” meant a nice even row, that only gave mutual support from one direction?

Bad science on our part. There’s a reason why each experiment is supposed to change just one variable at a time. But we never did go back to finish looking at the baking powder idea because Scott paused to talk things out with Mirtill. Understanding the history and purpose showed us that Kvircedli were meant to have a plain flavor, and were not a medium for display like Springerle. Who would want to dunk a work of art? Why would you want to distract from the wine you’re sampling, especially with brilliant, jewel tone colors? And if the rectangular shapes served a purpose, that meant the breakaway effect was deliberate, which in turn…

You get the idea. It made more sense to go back and tweak the original recipe for a longer and lower cooking time that would allow more of the ammonia to bake off. The original formula called for 12-20 minutes at 150º C, which is 300º F. We reduced the temperature to 140º C (285º F) and left them in for the full 20 minutes, with a single spin at the 10 minute mark to avoid hot spots.

The result? A little less browning on the bottom, which we missed; the exact “yellow” tone described in the original recipe, which hadn’t been as clear before; and about 75% less reek in the finished cookies. Mirtill had also told us that she’d done enough casual research to believe that true Swabian bakers solve the problem by simply leaving the baked cookies out for a day before eating. Another baker we met on Facebook confirmed this in a conversation with her Hungarian relatives. And, sure enough, that leftover smell disappeared after a few hours on a plate once we instituted the longer baking time.

And so you get to our final verdict. For shaped and dried cookie dough that is ⅜” thick (1 cm), bake at 285º for 20-25 minutes instead of 300º for 12-20. That’s what you will read in the recipe below. Here in private we will use less exact numbers and call it 18-30 minutes to allow for differing ovens and the erratic moods of your household gremlin. We’ve all got one, and they have a notoriously fickle sense of humor.

Problem solved, at least well enough to avoid going back for a new round of experiments with baking powder. Let us know if you try it, however. We’d love to know if there is a way to make the recipe without having to deal with the cat box effect.

Conclusion

Molded cookies involve some extra work to stamp in the pattern, and extra time because of the overnight rest that forms the required crust. There is no getting around that. But if you are the sort of baker who likes that process, we 100% believe you ought to give Kvircedli a try. That goes double if you happen to own a traditional 4-sided mold that can be conveniently rolled-and-pressed, or one of those patterned rolling pins. Either way, target a final thickness of around ⅜” (1 cm), which will be cut into nice, rectangular shapes. Array on your tray about ⅛” (3-4 mm) apart, and then proceed.

Go with the classic lemon-only profile if you want to stick with tradition and/or use them in a wine tasting. They really work that way, and yes: we did make sure to test it. [Hic!]

Add flavor to the dough if you want to eat the cookies out of hand (although Kate loves everything lemon and adores them as they are). Flavored, eating cookies can be painted if you so desire, but do not do so for dunkers. It serves no purpose and distracts from the wine itself.

Here is a final photo, and a copy of our updated recipe. Enjoy!

It should be a dry white wine, of course. That is the style of Mór, whence Kvircedli originate. The photographer, however, responds that white wine may be correct, but red is more photogenic. That answers that.

CROATIAN RAFIOLI – a/k/a Dalmatian and Trogirski Rafioli

The most romantic cookie ever?

First things first. This is a delightful cookie, and is much easier to make than you might think from Scott’s tale of woe toward the end.

The dough is super simple: throw it all together and knead until smooth. The filling is just as simple: mix the dry ingredients and then fold in whipped egg whites. Then you wrap “A” around “B”, seal, and bake. It’s nothing more than a classic, fine grained macaroon with special flavors that is wrapped inside an easy crust.

The challenges only exist for people (like us) who’ve never learned how to seal a filled dumpling like pierogies or one of the Italian pastas. If you have that trick down, you’re golden. Easy peasy. If not, blame the difficulties on your (our) lack of skill at issue, not the recipe. We have no more right to complaint someone with no knife skills can object to instructions like, “dice the onions.”

As always, skip to the bottom if all you want is the recipe. Most of this post is about the legend, history, influences, and cultural importance behind this cookie – the “heritage” part that we find so interesting. That will require some time. No need to slog through the story if that isn’t your thing.

PART I: WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT THE STORY?

First we need to set the scene. Croatia is a small country in the Balkans with an enormous coastline on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea (that’s the one between the Italian and Greek peninsulas). This coastline has a natural beauty to rival anywhere on earth. Those legendarily lovely Greek islands and coasts you see in glamour shots? Same geography and part of the world.

The region of Dalmatia (from whence the dogs are named) nestles into the most scenic part of that beautiful coastline. There are no bad spots, but the most beautiful of them all may be around the untouched medieval town called Trogir (a Unesco world heritage site since 1997), which lies just above the legendary Isle of Vis; a place so lovely that they moved some of the Mamma Mia II filming there for extra flavor.

Adjectives fail.

Vis and Trogir are ground central for the most famous of all Croatian desserts: a sweet, filled cookie called “Rafioli”. Every village and grandma in the country claims its or her own special variation, of course, and serves it for every baptism, wedding and holiday feast in the year. We found a good dozen translatable recipes on the Internet with names starting from the largest region (“Croatian”), and working on down through Dalmatian (“Dalmatinski”), Trogir (“Trogirski”), and a few others.

Fortunately enough, the devil lies in the details. The basics are always the same. Rafioli start with a lot of eggs. Our recipe uses half a dozen. You then (A) make a sweet pasta dough with the yolks, (B) make a sweet filling by combining the whites with finely ground nuts and various floral notes, and then (C) wrap A around B and bake. The result is a perfect compromise between Italian desserts and the more rose- and flower-water notes of the Ottoman Empire. But more on that later. First we have to finish the story.

Life in Trogir has been repeatedly shattered over the millennia by invasion and war from every direction. It started with the ancient kingdom of Dalmatia. That fell to Rome in a famously bloody conquest. Rome lasted a while, but then split in two with this region right on the dividing line. It ended up going with the eastern half under the sway of Constantinople, but only after some more fighting. The Saracens came through and left the town ashes during the 1100’s, which led to 300 years of semi-life comparable to an old jalopy that backfires every few miles. This went on until 1420, when the Renaissance city state of Venice absorbed the town as part of its trading empire.

That golden age, such as it was, lasted until the Hapsburgs (Austria) took over Venice itself in 1797. It gets no better after that, but we don’t need to continue. Rafioli were born in that 400-year period of Venetian rule.

Now you may think the name is nothing more than a bastardization of “ravioli”, a word that derives naturally enough from the Italian verb “to wrap.” It’s a natural enough assumption, but don’t say that in Croatia unless you want to start a fight! They insist that the name actually derives from a maiden called Rafiola, the Croatian equivalent to the French, Spanish and Italian names Rafaela, Rafiela, and equivalents with different spellings like a “ph” for the “f”, and/or multiple L’s. Think “a feminine version of the famous Renaissance artist’s name.”

What’s the true answer? I’ve spent more time thinking about it than anyone should, and my guess would be that the cookie name is and always was a pun designed to include both of the competing word origins. It only matters for us because the lady comes with a legend! It goes like this.

Once there was a beautiful young maid who got herself locked in the famous tower of Trogir Castle, which rises above the sea up to the present day. There she waited, like the maiden Rapunzel (named after an herb if you want more puns), for her lover to come to her rescue. But Rafiola did not sit idle, braiding her magical hair! No, she was much more productive. She studied the arts of nigh-on-magical baking, so she’d be ready to delight the young lord who’d come to her rescue.

To make a long story short, he eventually found her, she continued her baking, and they lived happily ever after. The end. Or rather the beginning, for the great creation that took on her name: Rafioli (the plural of Rafiola). Talk about “heritage”! It doesn’t get any better than that.

Your Honors, please accept our nomination for Valentine’s Cookie of the Year: Croatian a/k/a Dalmatian a/k/a Trogirski Rafioli.

PART II: WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT THE COOKIE?

We wrote a gigantic doorstop of a cookie book with more than 250 recipes, most of which came from Europe and few of which are just variations on a classic theme. It wasn’t just 80 Versions Of A Drop Cookie With Different Ingredients. That’s a fact that makes us very proud. Instead it covered every different type and approach to cookies that we could find. This recipe has no real parallel in any of the ones we studied before.

The cookies in this blog will eventually yield Volume II if we can ever get enough of them tested. So far a lot of those new recipes have come from looking deeper into baking traditions across the Mediterranean. Corsica gave us Canistrelli. Sardinia, Pappassani. The areas around Florence yielded Ricciarelli and Cavallucci. Ancient medieval trade routes broadened our repertoire of macaroons. The Middle East is yielding secrets such as Persian Nan-e Berenji, Egyptian Ghorayebah, Israeli Tahini Cookies, and others. Etc.

This cookie is almost unique in that context too. The only analogy we’ve come up with – and it is a loose one – is this: Rafioli are something like an East-Meets-West marriage of the most refined Italian coffee house sweets with Maamoul, the ubiquitous, rosewater scented, filled cookie that’s across the entire Muslim world. In short, you are reading about a culinary missing link that differs from everything else you’ve ever made, and is marvelous enough to stand with the best of them. That’s what we call special.

The filling starts with a base of sugar and powdered nuts; usually almonds, but occasionally pine nuts or pistachios. We recommend almond flour. Flavor that base with rosewater, vanilla, maraschino cherry juice/liqueur, and your choice of the Local Touch that suits your taste and mood (see below). That’s about it. Fold in the whipped egg whites and you’re done.

The cherry part is nothing short of brilliant, by the way. It marries amazingly well with the rose, which would be overwhelming on its own. Consider the vanilla (another flower if you think about it) as your chaplain to bind the two together. It’s one of those combinations you’d never imagine on your own, and will never forget once you’ve tried it. We’ve seen versions that add in some cherry jam as well, but did not test them. Let us know if you do. It sounds like that could work.

It’s the Local Touch that divides Croatian bakers into their respective camps. Some recipes (a clear minority) add in raisins, dates, or figs to create a filling almost identical to what you see on the Mediterranean’s eastern shores. We’ve omitted that option on the grounds that Maamoul the Great deserves its own post. No copycats allowed.

The next two variations are where we focused our attention. The clear #1 for genuine Rafioli from Trogir adds a hefty shot of lemon or orange to enhance the floral high notes. That combination has a more of a sunrise eye, calling to mind a Middle Eastern flavor palate. The sunset version may have orange zest, but never the juice because you don’t want the acid. This Local Touch centers on some bitter chocolate that offsets the flowery highs with an earthy bass. That balance of bitter against sweet reflects the Italian side of the Adriatic.

We include both options because only a fool would stick his nose into a fight among Balkan partisans. Choose the one that matches your personal taste. But if you’ll accept some free advice, do not argue with the Croatian grandma who tells you that you’ve got it wrong.

PART III: AND THEN CAME THE CRUST

We have struggled with finding the best solution for these filled Mediterranean cookies. Our book includes a fantastic recipe for Flaky Foldovers, but that is a very north-European recipe that’s more similar to a buttery piecrust or French puff pastry than what you see around the Mediterranean. The Italian crusts for filled cookies like Tortelli tend to add a little bit of egg white into the dough. They taste okay, but the texture is too dry for American palates (even though we’ve been assured by natives that this is normal for Italy). Maamoul, mentioned above, is made with a crust that uses clarified butter a/k/a ghee a/k/a samneh to create a moldable paste more than an actual dough.

What they do in Croatia is totally different. Remember how the filling starts with what’s essentially a flavored almond paste, and then lightens it up with whipped egg whites? Croat bakers add those egg yolks to the cookie’s crust. The result is surprisingly close to an actual pasta dough! We kid you not.

The recipe below uses 6 egg yolks, 500 g. of flour, 12 tbsp. of oil, and 50 g. of sugar (plus some extra flavors).
Reduce the flour to 350 g., the oil to 3 tbsp., and strip out the sugar and flavors. You now have a standard, if yolk-heavy, ravioli dough of the sort you’d wrap around meat or cheese.

Rafioli to ravioli in one easy step. Coincidence? Probably not. It’s far more likely to be yet another example of how east meets west in this unique little cookie.

PART IV: FILLING, CHECK. CRUST, CHECK. FILLING… NOT SO MUCH

We said it above, and will say it again down here. Nothing about this cookie was “hard” until it came to getting the filling inside its wrapper of dough. That will no doubt be easy for those of you who grew up making ravioli, tortellini, or pierogies. You have the tools, and you have the knowledge. Knowledge is power.

We came to this project with neither. The instructions are easy enough.

First you want to roll the dough out thin. A pasta machine would make this simple, but we don’t own one. And we weren’t about to invest in yet another device that would occupy already overcrowded shelf space. That left rolling by hand. The dough really, really likes to snap back, but that wasn’t where we ran into the problem. Sealing the edges turned out to be… problematic.

There’s no way to sugar coat it. This was our test batch #1 after Kate got through playing with it:

Note the light color of the “macaroon” filling. This was the more East-looking version that includes both lemon zest and juice. Down below there are photos of the more West-looking variation, which contains some dark chocolate to balance out the high notes.

[Sigh].

EXTRA SPICE FROM KATE: I love my husband dearly, but he is an obsessive perfectionist when it comes to these cookie recipes. We are not a commercial bakery! We are not required to have every cookie come out looking like it belongs inside a window display on the paradise island of Vis! Those cookies were smiling because they tasted just as good as their prim and proper counterparts. Maybe even better. They were not, Not, NOT “failures”! They just had a special character all their own.

My wife is wise. My wife is right. But obsessive perfectionists have our place as well! I was not about to be defeated by something that people with a little extra experience do hundreds of time per day with nary a flaw. The solution, at least for me, lay in two tricks. The first cost exactly $1.29 and looks like this:

Found at our local Oriental food market being sold as a tool for “meat pies” a/k/a pork dumplings. The impression did not last in the dough. Similar products are available for pierogies, and a bit of online research shows six-at-a-time versions for ravioli.

That gadget, and learning that you want to roll the dough out to exactly the thickness of a U.S. quarter (¹/₁₀” = 1.75 mm), finally got us to this:

The one that separated was rolled too thin. The dough shrinks a little as it cooks, just as the filling will push out a little as it cooks. Scott rolled this one out to where you could read through the dough, as you’d do for a strudel.

So the moral of the story is clear. The cookies taste just as good if the seals burst open. It’s your home, and anyone who complains will only leave more for you. Right? But $1.29 and a little attention will solve the issue, and prevent your spouse from making jokes about choruses of singing frogs and, god forbid, car lashes.

Don’t ask. You don’t want to know. If that isn’t a line to end on, I don’t know what is. Happy baking to you all!

P.S. Note the end of the recipe. The leftover filling makes absolutely delicious macaroons when cooked on it’s own.

“Too busy!” says Kate. “Cheerful and charming!” says Scott. And you say? BTW, please note the filling-only macaroons on the left. They’re really, truly scrumptious! Though it may be presumptuous… Oh no, what have I done? That ear worm is not going away any time soon.

More from the too-thin dough school here. You can see the “macaroon” filling on the inside. This batch has a darker shade because it was tested with the “Sunset oriented” version that includes a bit of grated chocolate. Yum.

MARZIPAN & ALMOND PASTE – the recipe beneath the recipes

Many thanks to Pixabay.com for sharing this royalty-free image. Cuuuute!

A few weeks ago we put up recipes for a set of Five macaroon recipes we’ve come to love – which could be described as marzipan suspended in an egg white meringue. And I am now working busily on a special Croatian treat called “Rafioli”, which is basically an exotically flavored almond paste wrapped inside a baked pasta shell. [Watch for it!]

German Mandelhörnchen and a Greek equivalent are also on our “to do” list after Kate took an initial whack that wasn’t too far from being right. Those amount to a flavored marzipan or almond paste lightened with fewer egg whites than you’d use for macaroons, formed into crescents, and then dipped in chocolate.

EXTRA SPICE FROM KATE: We have no photos of the Mandelhörnchen because a mysterious cookie gremlin raided our kitchen before anyone could add the chocolate part. Skeptical spouses have wondered if “doppelganger” would be a more accurate than “gremlin,” but I admit nothing. He only suggests such an outrageous thing because they are one of my all time favorites, both tasty and toothsome.

And then… Hmm, a pattern seems to have formed! There are dozens, if not hundreds of baked goods that start with a base of finely ground almonds, mixed with sugar and then bound by egg whites. That ingredient is called “Almond Paste” when left loose and a little sticky, or “Marzipan” when you add enough extra almonds to make it solid. We wouldn’t call either one a “cookie” all on its own. Commercial marzipan is actually marketed more like a not-so-sweet candy (with U.S. and English versions tending to be sweeter), and almond paste as an ingredient. But the basic concept gets used in so many true cookies, and cookie fillings, that it’s only fair to give our version.

Besides, Valentines Day is coming next month and you can earn some major brownie points by making Marzipan treats and forming them into something romantic. And double-besides, the recipe for Marzipan contains a couple of surprises that many people don’t know about, such as a tiny bit of rosewater used as everyone’s not-so-secret ingredient.

Anyway, here is our version for your education, edification, and delight.

This lovely photo of Marzipan Fruits at the Nuremberg Christmas Market is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share alike 2.0 Generic license at the linked website. Many thanks to the author for his or her generosity.

CAVALLUCCI – A Honey Biscuit from the mountains of Tuscany

Okay, yes. That is star anise from China rather than regular anise from Italy. Live with it. This makes the prettier picture.

Such a romantic name for such a plain little critter! “Cavallucci” translates to “little horsemen,” which I suspect comes from the fact that having no leavening, and no fat except the nuts, made them ideal treats for horsemen riding through the Tuscan hills. Probably in search of some well grown evergreens, where the elusive porcini can be found. I’m sold right there.

But Cavallucci also have some modern romance. This, and its soft almond lookalike Ricciarelli, are the treats of Sienna, a smaller city about 50 miles south of Florence. You will not escape a visit without getting to experience the unique, chewy balance of honey, orange, anise, and other spice that these are all about. So why not visit from the comfort of your own home kitchen?

As always, skip to the bottom if you want the recipe without any discussion

It’s All About Balance

Moving on, it’s that key word – “balance” – that catches the essence of what these are really about. Our friends and family will attest that your humble authors are better as cooks than we are as bakers. Especially me. Kate does cakes too, but my baking really begins and ends with three categories: (1) heritage cookies, (2) lemon curd, and (3) anything made with chocolate.

Both of us find Northern Italian cuisine particularly intriguing because it’s such a challenge. There’s such delight to be found in achieving perfection through skill and nuance alone. Think of recipes like scaloppini or piccata. They have what, three or four ingredients plus salt and pepper? And yet the results can vary from shlock to divine. It’s a culinary balance beam trick. Impressive as heck if you get the balance right, and embarrassing if you don’t.

Cavallucci should be approached with that same sensitivity. The core of the recipe is little more than flour held together with lots of honey, plus orange peel and walnuts with a healthy shot of anise. Honey, orange, and anise; three flavors that love each other. So what could go wrong? Lots, as it turns out. You’ve got to get the balance right, and that balance has to include texture as well as flavor.

Balancing The Texture

This cookie begins with a trick you see often when honey gets used in bulk. You don’t use the raw material on its own. Rather, you mix it with some added sugar, thin it with some water, and then simmer until everything comes together into a syrup. Candies take it a little further, cooking the sugary liquid up toward the soft-crack, hard-crack, and caramel stages depending on what you intend to do. No need to worry about that here. All you’re after is a nice, smooth syrup. It’s a trick we first learned with German Lebkuchen and Swiss Leckerli. It seemed strange and special at the time, but by now it’s become a standard part of the toolkit. Every one of the dozen or so Cavallucci recipes we looked at started in just that way.

The texture then expands in both directions – chewier and lighter – with the addition of candied orange peel and larger bits of walnut. Nothing to it, right? But it’s easier to fall off the balance beam than it is to stay erect.

A VALUABLE NOTE: There wasn’t enough room in the recipe to emphasize how important it is to get the size of your pieces right. That may sound obsessive but it isn’t. Balance, balance, balance! Candied orange peel has a stick-to-your-molars texture that totally takes over if you let the pieces get any bigger than a raisin, and that disappears in between your teeth if you cut it down to peppercorn size. Both can be annoying. As for the walnuts, they just vanish if you get them down to “finely chopped,” and break the product into sections if you leave them whole. Again, chopped just to raisin size is the perfect compromise.

Balancing The Flavor

That covers the texture. Next up, flavor. What have we got already? Honey (yum) and orange (yum). Two flavors that love each other. But… they’re obvious. No style. That slight bit of bitterness in the walnuts just isn’t enough to round things out. There are a lot of ways you could handle this in theory. Bakers in the walnut loving Balkans and Black Sea regions might grind up a great, big handful of walnuts to use as a bitter nut flour. Health conscious bakers might try substituting in a bit of whole wheat flour. The most common trick in Siena, and the cheapest for American bakers, is to round out the honey with a small hit of molasses.

NOTE: Our favorite page in the entire book – the conversion table! – should can be your friend here. One cup of white sugar plus one tablespoon of molasses equals light brown sugar. Two tablespoons of molasses equals dark brown sugar. We specify light brown sugar in the recipe, but every baker deserves to claim each cookie as his or her own. Those numbers tell you the basic amounts you’re working with, and should empower you to adjust as your palate suggests. The textural properties of molasses will not be an issue because they overlap with the honey. Knowledge is power!

So now the honey works, and the texture is right. The next element to turn these into true Sienese Cavalluci comes from the anise. This recipe contains a whopping four (4) teaspoons of anise seed. Holy. Friggin. Cow. That, however, isn’t strange for the region. Italians adore anise in the same way that Americans love cinnamon. But that much… well, it is another case where you need to work on the balance.

Fortunately enough, the native bakers agree. I do not think we saw a recipe that did not try to soften the licorice flavor with a bit of this and a bit of that. We ended up with a background mixture of other sweet spices, led by cinnamon of course since we are, after all, Americans.

The bottom line here is a waybread biscuit (they aren’t pretty enough to deserve the exalted title of “cookies”) with a distinctive, chewy texture and a sweet, addictive flavor that hits you in waves. It starts with the honey and orange, and then evolves to include the anise. All those rounding-out touches (the walnuts, molasses, and other spices) keep any of those three from dominating the composition, and show up on their own in the aftertaste.

Conclusion

It really is like a good Veal Scaloppini, or Chicken Marsala. Simple food, done very well, and adding up to more than the sum of it’s parts. Serve with coffee, tea, or an aperitif that can handle the sweetness. They are better when they’re not alone, at least in our opinion. But you won’t be disappointed regardless, and a plateful of Cavallucci is much less expensive than a ticket overseas.

A FINAL NOTE: Cavallucci fall in the category of waybreads because all that honey acts as a preservative. They may dry out but they aren’t going to get stale or go rancid unless you lock them in a drawer and forget about them for more time than any of us care to imagine. There is also an easy fix if they do dry out. Put the little bricks in a tin or other tightly sealed container with a slice of sandwich bread. Wait a day or two, and the moisture will move out of the bread and into the cookies; drawn there by the hygroscopic (water loving) power of the honey. Hey presto, Bob’s your uncle. Repeat as needed.

A REALLY, TRULY FINAL NOTE: We haven’t tried it, but this is pretty obviously a formula recipe that ought to work with almost any combination of matching flavors. Honey, orange, and anise typify northern Italy. Do something with dried pineapple or mango, and macadamia nuts, and you ought to get a wonderful treat for drinks on the lanai. Pecans, dried apple, and maple would pair well with a hoppy ale or hard cider on a front porch rocker. Or maybe… You get the idea. We tend to focus on cookies that come with deep historical roots, and a story to match. But there is nothing more American than taking a great idea from the old country and turning it into something new, and maybe even better. So please: test your seat in the baking saddle, and let us know what rides out from your neck of the woods.

SUGARPLUMS – Kate’s new love. Make them, and make them your own!

Three different Sugarplums from our 2017 tray. The red ones are made with pecans and almonds for the nuts; 2 oz. each of dried cherries, dates, figs, raisins, and candied orange for the fruit; Kirsch for the booze; and the Warm Spices mix. The gold balls are made with almonds for the nuts; dates, apricots and candied orange peel for the fruit; brandy; and the Scandinavian spice mix. The blue ones have walnuts & almonds; candied ginger, figs and a couple of dates; gin; and a combination of lemon zest, cardamom, and pepper, much less clove, and a touch of cinnamon. Kate got to play!

Kate writes:

“I never took the concept of no-bakes seriously at all until we tried making Sugarplums. Sugarplums! Dried fruit and nuts and spices, tied together with a bit of honey. Highlighted with candied or grated orange zest and a bit of brandy. Coated in sparkling colored sugar, they look as festive as they taste. And if you excuse the sugar coating, which can be substituted by finely chopped nuts, you’ll even get a treat that consists of wholesome ingredients!

Thus it was the humble, ancient sugarplums that turned my eye, changing my mind about the concept of no-bake cookies. Because a cookie can be perfectly delicious despite being easy to make. These are part of our ‘easy’ category.”

Scott adds:

If you don’t have the paper book, I urge you to print this recipe out, put it in a plastic sheet protector, and start keeping annual notes on your various experiments. There is no “right” Sugarplum! That is their basic and most fundamental charm. They are all about what YOU like, and what YOU come up with.

And if you have out paper book, for heaven’s sake feel free to start writing on the pages. It isn’t holy writ! We put those blanks and “My Notes” pages in for a reason. We wrote our book to be that one you will use to death and then pass on to the next generation. How will they be able to reproduce what [Grand] Mom and Dad did if you don’t record your own special tricks and observations?

It’s not like you need our permission, but you have it. Permission and active encouragement. Make that copy your own! Nothing would make the authors happier.

FIVE (5!) MACAROONS – Renaissance recipes for the modern world

It’s hard to get more “heritage” than the early Renaissance, and that’s what we have here: four famous cookies that grew into maturity along with the likes of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, Botticelli (with whom Leonardo supposedly founded a restaurant), Verrocchio, Raphael, and the rest of them. And Columbus for that matter. What can inspire artistic brilliance more than a really good cookie? The answer is obvious: Nothing!

We’re talking about classic macaroons, a cookie dating back to the trade boom that followed the Black Death’s destruction of medieval civilization. Arab traders introduced a variety of products to eager consumers in the trade centers of Italy and Spain. Two main ones in turn led to the creation of macaroons: refined sugar and marzipan a/k/a almond paste. Yes, those ingredients had been around forever, but they’d never been cheap enough to turn into everyday treats. Now they suddenly were, and Renaissance Europe was ready to adopt new ideas their grandparents would have scorned.

Italian and Spanish cooks started the process by incorporating the new ingredients into quick and easy baked goods using methods known since antiquity. The basic formula couldn’t be simpler. First whip some egg whites with sugar to make a meringue, using a more generous amount of sugar than before since it was now more affordable. Fold in some imported almond paste, and then bake. And there you have it! The first macaroons, commonly known as “Marzipanetti in Italy.

Matters evolved from there, with bakers slowly adopting the regional variations that eventually hardened into recipes. We have now worked up four versions of that basic recipe, distinguished by relatively small changes in the way they’re flavored and presented. Here is a table to more-or-less compare the four recipes, normalized to an even one pound of almonds. [NOTE: The different egg sizes occur because those recipes start from a different amount of almonds].

Most Ancient Macaroons

* 450 g almond meal

* 300 g sugar

* 3 XL egg whites

* No zest

* ½-1 tsp. almond extract

* 350° for ≈ 10 minutes

Ricciarelli

* 450 g almond meal

* 300 g sugar or 150 g honey
* 2 egg whites + 1 yolk
* Orange zest

* 2 tsp. almond & vanilla

* 350° for ≈ 12-13 minutes

Alemandrados

* 450 g almond meal

* 265 g sugar

* 1 jumbo egg

* Lemon zest

* ½ tsp. almond extract

* 350° for 8-10 minutes

Amaretti

* 450 g almond meal

* 290 g sugar

* 4 egg whites

* No zest

* 9 tsp. almond extract

* 350° for ≈ 12 minutes

CINNAMON STARS (“ZIMTSTERNE”) – Strange, wonderful, & familiar all at once

Cinnamon Stars, complete with a hole for hanging them off your tree.

This is the cookie we point to when people ask for an example of what we mean by a “heritage” cookie. There aren’t many Americans who are familiar with Zimtsterne (zimt = cinnamon, sterne = stars), but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in a German speaking country who does not know them. Or in a country that borders on one of those nations. They are as common and ubiquitous in that part of the world as Chocolate Chip Cookies in the U.S.

The fact that people need to learn about them is one part of the “strange”. The other lies in how the cookies are made.

As always, skip to the bottom if you only want the recipe.

If you’re reading this, we assume that you’re a baker. Have you ever seen, anywhere, a cookie where you bake on the icing? It’s brilliant!

At their core, Cinnamon Stars are nothing more than a very refined version of a dense macaroon. You grind up nuts (in this case using a mixture for added complexity), flavor those nuts (in this case with spices for yet more complexity), mix that with a French meringue (egg whites whipped with superfine or powdered sugar), and then bake (in this case using a very low oven for color and texture. Change the type of meringue with a higher percentage of whites, and you’ll end up with a flavored Macaron. Change the spices to metric ton of almond extract with an average 350 F (175 C) baking temperature, and you’ll have Amaretti. Make that a bit of citrus with almond meal instead of flour, and you’ll get the antique Renaissance versions like Sienese Ricciarelli or Spanish Almendrados.

It’s a simple concept. But… whoever heard of rolling out your macaroon dough before baking? Or baking on the icing?

It works because the icing is just that same French meringue mixed with added lemon juice. Meringue bakes well. Obviously. And that lemon juice works wonders, because being in the icing preserves all the high notes. That is one of the tricks we learned along the way. Lemon zest works great inside a cookie because the zest holds all the essential oils (the perfume of the fruit). But the tang of the lemon juice will disappear. If you want to catch those sharp, acidic notes you need to put them into an icing.

That covers “strange.” Wonderful comes from the overall flavor, and a Northern European tradition we’ve adopted for years: the Tree Of Gifts.

**Moravian Snowflakes, Polish Gingerbread (Pierniczki), a chocolate angel (on the bottom), and a Cinnamon Star hiding behind the candle on the upper right.**

Another view, with the Cinnamon Star on the upper left. Note that all the cookies are on the upper half of the tree. That’s essential if you have either small children or, in our case, a labrador retriever in residence.

A guest arrives during the holiday season? Invite them in, and say “Please have a treat off the tree!” It captures the spirit of the holiday like nothing else. Tree; decorations; sweets; cookies; and all topped off with hospitality.

Cinnamon Stars make great decorations because they’re sturdy enough to last through the holiday season. Snowflakes have no rival when it comes to appearance, but any humidity in the air will soften them up enough to sag an break through a ribbon. (Don’t even think of hanging them with a metal wire). And gingerbreads tend to be so thick and heavy that they make the branches sag if you aren’t careful. Cinnamon Stars are ideal.

You can decorate Cinnamon Stars by tinting the dough, the icing, or both. Or by standard decorating after they’re baked using royal icing, dragees, luster dust, etc. We tend to keep them plain, but that’s a question of taste.

As for “familiar”, there is absolutely nothing in this cookie that will surprise or offend the most tender of American palates. Cinnamon Stars taste like dense, chewy, lemony Snickerdoodles with a fantastic appearance, and a lot of fragrant nuts. It’s a no risk experiment.

A FINAL BONUS: THREE FREE TIPS THAT AREN’T IN THE BOOK:

The recipe calls for three egg whites. That works, but things get tight when you try to toe the line between reserving what you want for the icing, and still having enough to hold all the nuts. You’ll gain safety margin if you use size XL egg whites instead of the standard U.S. “large”.
Add a tablespoon of molasses to the dough if you want a higher contrast between the base and the bright white icing. It changes the flavor a bit, but not unpleasantly. Our book includes a standard variation on this recipe (Vanilla Sticks), and that is more different than the effect of a little molasses.
Remember that you don’t need to spread your icing all the way to the edge. The cookies look just as good, and arguably better, if you leave a gap between the edge of the icing and the edge of the cookie. To be completely honest, we only avoid that because our decoration skills aren’t up to that level of precision. Baking, yes. Precision artistry? Not so much.

And now, on to the recipe. Enjoy! This was the very first Pavelle addition to the Stoy family collection of every-year cookies. Don’t be at all surprised if it turns out to be mandatory for your family too.

NOTE: If the cookies dry out, put them in a tin with a piece of bread and leave it overnight. Come the next day they’ll be perfect all over again.

PANFORTE – Sometimes you get it right

Our adventure with this extraordinary cookie began in 2019 when I met an old friend in the local supermarket – a former partner at the firm I joined out of law school. He had a cart full of baking supplies, I had just finished the initial version of our book, and Christmas was in the wind, so you can guess what happened next. I asked a question, he enthused, and we ended up in a discussion about family baking traditions. Who knew that Tom had a reputation going back for decades as the Great Baker of his circle? Birthday cakes, holiday cookies, even the occasional wedding table… just like us.

Tom gave the credit for his skill and passion to his Italian mother and grandmother. And he absolutely *loved* our cookbook project! “That reminds me of the one cookie I never managed to learn,” he said. “I don’t even know the name. It was black, dense, diamond shaped, and filled with chocolate, fruits, and nuts. Never any other shape. I wish I knew what it was.”

You know what? I did. Sort of.

As always, skip to the bottom if you only want the recipe. Most of what follows is the winding process of how we got there, and the tricks we learned along the way.

It Had To Be A Waybread a/k/a Winter Cake

We used to follow a public radio program called The Splendid Table, hosted by a scholar of Italian cooking traditions named Lynn Rosetto Kasper. She had done a segment on something she called “winter cakes;” meal-sized Italian equivalents of what we call “waybreads” in our book. It’s a category populated by dense, ancient treats that your great-to-the-Nth ancestors prepared at two different times: (A) during the holidays, to enjoy in slivers all the way through April, or (B) for a loved one to take on some extended journey. The common denominator? Winter cakes (waybreads) last basically forever from a practical point of view, being packed with so much sweetness, dried fruits, nuts, and often booze that they won’t go stale.

The old English version is fruitcake, inherited into the U.S. tradition with a great deal of snickering and jokes. But other versions abound across Europe, and I knew this had to be one of them. The diamonds gave it away.

I know from earlier research that American immigrants often adapted their traditional waybreads to the new world by using a standard U.S. sheet pan in place of the specialty cake pans they’d left behind. Cut the sheet-waybread into cookie-sized pieces with a vertical line in one direction and a diagonal in the other, and voila! Diamonds, which are much prettier than little squares, much more “American” than big cake shapes, and have the added bonus of creating a series of little triangles by the edges for the cook and her helpers to “test the bake.”

SIDEBAR: Cookie bits have no calories if you’re nibbling for practical reasons like testing! Everyone knows that, right? Ask your own Baba or Nana or Grandma if you doubt me. Most of them will admit it, and the ones who don’t will huff up in that particular way that lets you know the truth.

So here’s the bottom line. This was some kind of ancient waybread or winter cake. It probably came from Italy, given Tom’s heritage. It was dark to the point of being black. It was heavy and probably unleavened. And the primary ingredients were a mix of various nuts, several fruits, and a solid hit of chocolate.

Which Waybread Was It?

Off to the Internet I went and it wasn’t long before my search returned a long series of hits for something called Panforte; a specialty of the ancient Italian city of Siena, in Tuscany, about an hour by car to the south of Florence. It hit on every category, even down to a series of American photos showing thin, cookie-sized diamonds.

Bullseye!

Our now-familiar development procedure followed after that. First I compiled as many recipes as I could to get a good feel for the variations and the flavor profile. Panforte is pretty common, so I had well over a dozen to choose from.

This research confirmed the mix-of-nuts approach Tom had described, with almonds and hazelnuts being the most common. I balanced the fruit flavors in my head, adding dried apricots as a potential substitute for the surprising presence of candied pineapple in so many recipes. I rejected citron – the bane of fruitcake eaters everywhere! – for the equally common and much better tasting candied orange peel. All pretty standard. Alter as you wish.

The sweetener in the recipe turned out to be a mix of honey cooked together with sugar. No surprise there! One of the best waybreads in Volume I is called Leckerli, a sheet pan cookie centered on walnuts. Northern Italy and Switzerland aren’t that far apart, so it came as no surprise to see parallels in their cookies.ƒ

Next came the spices. These varied hugely, as you might expect. I sifted through a dozen variations and then settled on something more or less in the middle with two minor variations – chili powder and cardamom. Neither was unknown, so this wasn’t a true heresy, but neither were they common. Still, the combination made sense in my head, and offered a side benefit. They gave the flavor profile a little twist compared to all our other recipes. Again, modify as you desire.

Time For Attempt #1, And… Wow.

Mega wow. Ridiculously absurd, over the top, odes-to-the-cookie-gods wow. These darned things were awesome! We almost couldn’t believe it. Were all Panforte this good?

Aye, there’s the rub.

Kate and I can tell good from bad easily enough. And these were certainly good. But how could we tell if they were “right”? Neither of us comes from an Italian background. We had no internal target to aim for.

This, my friends, called for a trip to the Strip District.

Always Find Native Testers

The Strip is a narrow piece of land in Pittsburgh about 2-3 blocks wide and 6-8 blocks long, located just up the Allegheny River from the Downtown triangle where the Al and the Mon meet to form the O. It’s been our favorite part of the city since we moved here because the two main drags (Penn Ave. and Smallman) are lined with wholesale/retail ethnic stores. These include a number of different Italian places with histories going back close to 100 years, and a veritable bevy of first generation immigrants. Just the people to test our new cookie!

First up: Giuseppe at Penn Mac a/k/a the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company. This is our go-to stop for nuts, dried fruit, and other staples, and we bring them a tin every year.

“Giuseppe, we know these are good. That’s obvious. But are they Right? We need someone from the Old Country to give a reality check. Would you mind?”

No, not at all. He took a bite… and then looked at us like we we’d left our brains in the street. “You think there’s something wrong with these? They could be straight from Italia! They’re perfect! Just let me have a couple more pieces before you go… [munch, mumble, mumble, munch].”

Wait a sec. That never happens. Not ever! I had to visit the Strip three different times when I was working up South America’s famous Alfajores, and those are a simple, childhood shortbread. Maybe Giuseppe was just being kind.

No problem. There are other Italian stores in the Strip. On to Enrico’s Biscotti, whose owner, Larry, teaches traditional Italian baking to full houses several times per year. He’s a generous man with both his goods and his knowledge, but also one who believes in sharing the hard truths too.

“They’re perfect! What are you worried about? I especially like that little hint of heat at the end. And that floral note. It’s fantastic [munch, mumble, mumble, munch].”

Chili powder and cardamom: check. Let’s try Colangelo’s around the corner, another wonderful Italian bakery/restaurant.

“You could sell these anywhere in Italy and they’d call them Panforte. And believe me, they’d buy them, too! [munch, mumble, mumble, munch].”

The pattern continues! Sunseri Brothers? Ditto. And on it went, up and down the Strip. The answer was always the same. These weren’t just authentic Panforte, they were among the best Panforte that anyone had ever tasted. Stop worrying. Start bragging. And don’t mess with success. [Munch, mumble, mumble, munch].

Conclusion

I heard back from Tom about a week later.

“You got it! You nailed it! After all these years it’s just like sitting in my mother’s kitchen again.”

I love cookies.

NOTE: You can convert this to the traditional Italian winter cake with a few easy adaptations:

First, bake it in a tall cake pan instead of a sheet pan.
Second, sandwich the result between special wafers you can buy online.
Third, feed the cake version with brandy over time just as people do with fruitcakes; a thin brushing once per week for a month or two.
And FWIW… We also found an online note suggesting that Tom’s great-to-the-Nth-Nana would have stored her Panforte in chestnut leaves back in the day. How cool is that?

Panforte cakes should be served it in slivers (not slices) as a special treat to enjoy all the way into early Spring. A little goes a long way.

CZECH BEAR PAWS (MEDVEDI TLAPICKY) – Nailed at last! With nut, chocolate, and honey versions

The recipe for Bear Paws took us more time than any other recipe we’ve dealt with so far. It took that long because Kate knew what they were supposed to be, and there wasn’t a single version that even came close. It was maddening! We went through more than a dozen trials trying to nail things down. Probably closer to 20. At some point you stop keeping count.

As always, feel free to skip to the bottom if you want the recipe without the blow by blow development choices.

Building Up From Flour And Nuts

The first problem we faced had to do with flour. Most Czech recipes specify an even 3 cups of flour (400-425 g) but our experiments with this amount failed. The flour you buy in Prague is a little coarser and lower-protein than the AP flour used here, and the amounts did not translate. We vacillated between adapting the recipe around that standard, or reducing the amount of flour to match the other ingredients. In the end we went with the latter, settling on 2¾ cups (around 350 g). (NOTE: For what it’s worth, adding an egg yolk had been the best solution at the 3-cup level and we invite you to use it if you want a cookie that’s a bit less heavy on the nuts. We needed an egg yolk anyway for the chocolate version.)

Next up came the nuts. You need to understand that nut cookies lie close to all Czech hearts, as exemplified by the national adoration for Nut Horns. Bear Paws don’t go quite that far, but they’re still a nut-centric treat. That meant we had to spend a lot of time playing with the flavor and texture at the same time we were working on the flour as well. Quick tip: there is a reason why scientists insist on changing only one variable at a time.

But we got there in the end! A big key to getting this recipe “right” lies in using different sizes of walnut (ground and also chopped), combined with some other nut for a more complex flavor. We ended up using ground almonds. Hazelnuts would have worked too, but I put my foot down. “Enough is enough. People who want nut perfection should turn the page to the Nut Horns recipe!” Besides, cookbook recipes should have different flavors, not just different shapes and textures. We weren’t after Nut Horns made in a mold.

The same logic applied to toasting the nuts in advance. We do that religiously for Nut Horns, but chose not to for Bear Paws. The added flavor, combined with the spice/honey flavors, did not add enough to justify the extra work, especially when we wanted the final product to stand out as something different.

But – the big “but” – you Dear Reader, do not have that same need! These may be forks in the road where you want to go right instead of left. Are you a founding member in the Cult of Filbert? If so, by all means feel free to replace all or part of the almonds with hazelnuts. (Just be sure to make a note in your book about the experiment and its results, so both the future you and your heirs won’t have to rely on the vagaries of the mind). The same thing goes for the soft nut component. We used walnuts because that’s what they have in Prague, and Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World focuses on traditional recipes rather than exploring new possibilities. But there’s no reason why American pecans would not work as well as walnuts, and maybe even better. Go ahead and give them a try. The same goes for cashews, macadamia nuts, and even peanuts. Play to your heart’s content.

Moving On To The Details

That covered the two main ingredients: flour and nuts. Our next few batches involved ventures into Spice Cookie Land. This, thank heaven, took less time than the first set of issues. The only complication lay in customizing the mix for the nut-only version and the chocolate-nut variation;, and then a third time for my Honey Bear Paws (which have now become the family favorite).

AN ASIDE: Yes, I really did put the name “Hunny Bear Paws” down as the initial recipe title for that variation. You have Kate to thank for avoiding the pain that eye roll would have caused. Just note that she issued the veto more because they were too good, than in protest against poor Pooh. “There’s nothing childish about that cookie, and it doesn’t deserve a childish name!” Fair enough. She was right on both accounts.

Of Cookies That Stick And Life Hacks Around Them

Don’t let the appearance confuse you! Actual Madeleines are a small, handheld cake. Bear Paws are a dense, flavorful nut-and-spice cookie. Only the shapes are the same, and in the Czech Republic people use the traditional paw-shaped molds instead.

Think we were done? Nope. There were two separate issues that go to the question of casualties. First, as Kate wrote in the book, “Whether in Prague or in Princeton, these were a right pain to make. The reason? They were tender, they stuck to the molds, and the yield was relatively low compared to cut-out cookies.” We tried, but could not solve that inherent problem.

Coat your your trays well with both butter and flour. Very well indeed. Fail and you won’t be happy.

But that still left us with some family history to contend with. Kate’s Grandma Kandler actually liked to have a certain level of “casualties” because they made perfect snacks to go with her daily cup of tea. [NOTE FROM SCOTT: And perhaps as perfect lures to gain tea-time with a cookie-obsessed granddaughter…? Grownups are tricky that way.]

Kate’s mom faced a different problem after they immigrated to America. She tried to avoid the casualties. First, because a lot of nuts were hard to find back in the 1980’s (particularly hazelnuts), and second, because she got less joy from sampling the wares. So Mom created a life-hack instead. Old fashioned Bear Paws resulted in too many losses? No problem. She saved those casualties in a big bag along with all the other damaged nut, spice, and butter cookies, and then combined them to make what we’ll call “Smart Lady Bear Paws.”

After everything else was done, Jarmila took out that bag of broken bits, tossed them into a food processor, and ground them into crumbs. Then she bound the crumbs with an egg-white meringue and voila! A tasty and pre-sweetened Casualty Macaroon dough! But then she made the next discovery; that dough would hold its shape if baked in a (religiously buttered and floured) Madeleine mold. And it was much less fragile than true, old fashioned Bear Paws. What came next… Well, let’s just say that the original ursine appendage cookies found themselves on the endangered species list.

That trick reduced Mom’s stress level a good deal, but it added to ours. Did we need to include the egg white version too? Should we just focus on the original ones you’d buy from a bakery in Prague? Should it be a separate cookie, a variation, or a Cookie Nerd note about casualties?

We went a good way down that road before I put my foot down again. “We’re writing a book about Heritage Cookies, not life hacks. The Smart Lady version might be a family tradition, but it hasn’t been around long enough to qualify as a heritage recipe.” And 20 darned attempts was enough. Besides, I wasn’t producing that many casualties after all that practice.

KATE: Bwaa haaa haaa! Tee hee hee hee!

SCOTT: She really does tee-hee. Honest.

KATE: Well, that part is true.

SCOTT: And no, the scarcity is not tied to me testing the bake! Besides, that’s the baker’s privilege.

KATE: ~~omitted~~. [Author’s privilege].

SCOTT: Did you know, Dear Reader, that some people view unladylike words as even worse than unladylike guffaws?

KATE: Touchy, aren’t we? Tee hee hee.

But seriously – how do you write a recipe when there’s no way to know the proportion you’ll have of spice cookie bits compared to broken Butter Jellies and Bear Paws? Jarmila’s life hack wasn’t a “recipe,” it was a way to beat the system. And now you know it too.

Final Notes

About the decorations… The photos in our book show the full, impossibly cute version but there’s no need to go that far. We went whole hog with the decorations so the photo would tell a story that prevented people from confusing these for actual Madeleines.

The thing is, Kate will argue that less really is more in this case. The cookie itself tastes and feels amazing all on its own. All three varieties! The decorations add some extra sweetness, and the nut “claws” mess with that texture. There is something to be said for impossible cuteness, but fair is fair: you, Dear Reader, deserve to know that our household version does get baked in the Madeleine trays, but they’re served with nothing more than a dusting of powdered sugar. Especially the Honey Bear Paws.

And that covers it. Sorry for the length, but getting these right really was a saga. Enjoy!

MOLDED GINGERBREAD – How about a special treat?

Greetings from Kate!

One of my favorite bakes is gingerbread, and I especially like the way it comes out of the mold. I know that Scott gave you got a molded cookie in a recent blog, but we tend to start with the hardest ones first. We also start our baking with cookies that need to sit for a while and soften naturally.

Behold the soft plentitude of molasses and spices! The glaze is optional – I like to mix rum or brandy with powdered sugar until it’s thin enough to paint on with a soft, clean paintbrush.

These beauties are raw, the way they come out of the carved wooden mold. Their features dull a little upon baking, but the glaze will bring them back out. Stay tuned for more images later.

[Two Tricks From Scott:

For finer features, replace the baking soda in your recipe with Hartshorn a/k/a baker’s ammonia a/k/a ammonium carbonate a/k/a smelling salts. This 19th-century leavener creates smaller, more even bubbles that in turn create a finer, better refined texture.
Leave the formed cookies out to dry overnight, preferably in the fridge or under a fan. This will create a surface that’s just a little firmer than the bottoms that were resting on your parchment or tray. When the cookies rise during baking, Boyle’s Law says they will tend to have that surface rise up instead of spreading out with the moister, underneath part of the dough.

These are the two main tricks that allow for the creation of super-fine features on Springerle, the smooth caps on Macarons, and all the other cookies that feature a “foot” on the bottom..

And now I’m off to order our special, “we’re releasing our cookbook” tins! We’re not scouring local dollar stores this time. I want all the tins to have a nice, streamlined design and a custom-made label that will echo the branding of the cookbook cover – something I hope to show you next week.

Till then, happy baking!

~Kate